By Lauren Mark
March 23rd, 2020
Never before has social distancing taken on so many dimensional meanings.
Spit on, Yelled at, Attacked: Chinese-Americans Fear for their Safety
“I feel like I’m being invaded by this hatred. It’s everywhere. It’s silent. It’s as deadly as this disease.” Edward Anonymous
“Never before have I felt afraid to leave my home to take out the trash because of my face.” Jiayang Fan
Never before have various streams of news made the contours of identity positionings so salient.
There’s “mainstream” news about the climbing numbers of covid-19 around the world and aid packages that the U.S. government refuses to pass, so insistent is the government in devaluing requests from hospitals fighting the virus on the front lines in favor of the almighty business.
And there’s the stream of violence against the Asian diaspora that I can tune in or out of from my domestic isolation.
It’s almost as if I can choose when to feel like a targeted minority and when to rejoin the general populace.
Focus temporarily instead on the inane, like trying not to overeat when food seems to be one of the main pleasures left in the silence of sunlight filled walls.
Or on the fact that “getting ready” and putting on concealer and eyeliner are now done in preparation for a zoom meeting with expected video participation.
Birds sing to each other somewhere beyond the lattice work of the screen door…
and everything can seem copacetic for a moment…
April 2, 2020
Already, there are special edition calls for social solidarity or responses outlining best practices from populations experiencing discrimination during COVID-19.
Wanting to know how to best work with racially targeted communities during this pandemic.
How to advocate for social cohesion across difference.
How the racially targeted have somehow resisted racialization.
Why are we so consumed by immediately finding solutions? We all want “best practices.”
But if we are able to identify and codify methods of resistance to disseminate on paper, will this in some way mitigate the growing antagonism in the public eye? Will the production of counternarratives touch those throwing punches, throwing slurs, or slinging spit? Will they look to read these words? Will these words stop the hatred or fear in their hearts, or do they need to edge closer? How do we do this from across our social distancing? From quarantine?
Within this new reality that we are just learning to live with,
I’m not sure how I should feel, much less how I should act.
I have no innate desire to begin viewing strangers with suspicion. But every day, new accounts of violence against Asians are reported, and like it or not, they begin to color my perceptions of what I should fear from reality.
Everything has regressed to a stage of practice runs.
Practice runs for run-ins with other people outside of immediate family members and roommates, tinged with the shading from our daily companions, internet news reports.
Throughout all these runs, I cannot forget the voices of those who were brave enough to share stories of assault and derision.
Woman in Face Mask Assaulted by Man who calls her a Diseased Bitch – Feb 5
Or those who were targets of crimes so heinous they made it into the news all on their own.
Suspect admits he tried to kill [Asian] family at Midland Sam’s Club – March 16
They echo more loudly than recently experienced reverberations of disdain or avoidance by service workers.
I don’t know how to shake my increasing trepidation of other people.
I feel a new visceral empathy with Muslim-Americans in their post 9-11 trauma, with Latinos in their struggles against border policing and immigration accusations, and with the policing African-Americans endure every day.